The Rim of the Wheel
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Postcompletion. SPOILER WARNING: PostDark Tower. Roland finds himself on the shore of the Western Sea and must make a decision: carry on, or admit defeat. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or related indicia of the "Dark Tower" series: all copyrights are held by Stephen King, and may they long become him.

SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for the last book in the series

_Ka_ is a wheel, just as Time is, and neither of them have mercy.

He has been here before, on this blasted beach; and the last time he had been here he had been half-mad with fever, feeling it rave up his veins and fizz in his arteries, no longer sure that what he saw was truly there.

_Live iron_, he had said to Eddie when Eddie had come back for him. Eddie was gone now; gone as so many others had gone, along this long walk to his destiny, drawn in to him as swirling leaves are drawn to a fast current. _How many lives, Roland Deschain of Gilead? How many lives have you stolen in this quest—which amusingly enough has not ended where and when you had thought? How many otherwise purely innocent men and women have died for your geas?_

He feels, almost absently, for his guns: and they are there, as they had always been, the one true thing through all his travails. _I have forgotten the face of my father_.

Old, time-worn, hand-worn sandalwood fits perfectly into his palms. The last time he had found himself on this beach, he had lost fingers and a toe to the things he and Eddie had called _lobstrosities_: chitinous things with hungry beaks and endless, maddening questions. _Dod-a-chock? Did-a-chick?_ Sometimes he would wake from dreams of courtrooms where every other being but himself had been those creatures, asking over and over again in some idiot language questions for which he had no answers, and never would.

_Here is where I drew them,_ the gunslinger thinks, lying on his back on cold stones and staring up at the stars of a lifetime ago. _Here on this beach I drew them, the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, the Pusher. Here is where it truly began: because when I began my quest I was alone, say true, and without them I would have ended it here, with the creatures muttering as they ate the soft meat of my brain. _

On another world he has had Tarot cards drawn for him, and seen the half-second's hesitation as the drawer met his faded, icy eyes. On other worlds he has loved other women who have needed loving, and never drawn it from them as a thirsty man drinks from a wellhead. On other worlds he has fled headlong from those who had fallen by the wayside of his quest, and has stood and drawn and cleared leather and shot, and shot, and shot. And what has it gained him, the gunslinger wonders, staring up at those stars.

_Had I known back then on the edge of the desert,_ he wonders, _would I have begun it once? Or is that _ka_ again, merciless and endless like the great wheel of punishment? Will this time end differently, and do I care enough to make the stand?_

The shingled beach rustles and hisses as the tide begins to encroach again, in its idiot rhythm. Soon the things with their hungry claws and beaks will find him, and perhaps they will take his fingers or his toes, or his eyes. Soon it will all begin again: but there is one thing he can do to jump ship before this one leaves port. He thinks of the road ahead, and of the lovers and the friends who will die for that road, and stares up at the stars. One hand—his left—remains firm around the butt of Steven Deschain's revolver; the other has fallen away, lying like a curled white crab on the shingle.

_Coward_, he says to himself. Even as his mind forms the word he knows it is both true and untrue, as time can move between worlds, as things here are not as they are beyond the doors. _Coward, to have come through so many trials and want to escape before any more come to light._

_I have killed more men and women than I have shot,_ he says to himself. _I have sinned. I have used and I have taken, I have waked and slept because people I have known and loved did not wake again, for my sake. I have reached the Tower and what is on the other side is the worst thing, beyond imagining, beyond anything. The Crimson King is nothing to me now._

But was that true? What he had seen atop the Tower had been horrible, and horrible in a way that only mattered to him; but the thing that had got him moving and supported him this far had been the vague concept that perhaps it might not be the same mistakes he made, this time, that the wheel had turned a little for him, and that when he set out again he would not be entirely alone.

_Of course I am not alone. I bear them all with me. Every one. Every single one. _

_Mayhap that is what you have been lacking, gunslinger,_ his mind murmurs to him.

He lies where he had fallen for some hours, as the sun inches south and the lights and colours fade from the sea in its endless idiot pull-and-fade. He lies still while the click-whistle-scrabble-mutter of the lobstrosities rises in his hearing; and he remembers the pain of their claws and their beaks tearing off raw chunks of his flesh, remembers seeing those fingers still whole in the torn guts of the thing after he had killed it, and remembers vomiting, seeing black and gold spots drifting across his vision as his body curled and wrenched and _rejected_.

Even so one woman's words come back to him—words spoken further north up this same beach. _I thank you, gunslinger._

Slowly, stiffly, Roland of Gilead gets to his feet—feet which so far have escaped removal of any toes—and looks from the boil of the surf up the beach to the place of the first door.

_Ka is a wheel_, he thinks. _Along the way there have been some pleasances, and I am a small thing compared to what I have been with my friends beside me. I saw them die: perhaps there will be a time to see them live. _

Alone, as he has always been and will always be no matter how many men and women swear themselves to his cause, the gunslinger settles his shooting irons at his hips, shoulders his purse, and begins the long, long, long walk again.


End file.
